After the close yesterday, SMCI posted lousy earnings and outlook which put a chilling effect on the semiconductor space as a whole on the open today. The overall market struggled at the beginning which made for some interesting pessimistic trading after bad GDP news crossed the wire as well.

Inexplicably, at least from my perspective, the tech sector gained some steam as the day rolled on. There was a televised cabinet meeting and plenty of tap dancing by the administration's spokespeople talking about how a decrease in GDP is either a "good thing" or that this was actually President Biden's economy.

It does seem like a lot of traders are buying the rhetoric but I remain pessimistic on the earnings outlook(s) coming through the rest of this week and next. The swings on a number of tech stocks I follow were pretty wild with sudden runs or dives. A potential visit by Canadian Prime Minister to the White House got everybody excited all of a sudden.

The short gains dropped off within about 15 minutes, allowing me to offload some profitable put options, but then things reversed again to the upside for no reason that was clear to me.

I remain skeptical on the AI trade through this earnings season, which is leading me to hold some AMD puts through the close. They will report earnings early next week but I am expecting more indirect influences to push on their price from other places in the tech sector.

Log

• Lots of volatility, oof. The open went into sell-off immediately so I had to wait for a little bit of short covering in order to place some puts.
• Did fairly well but then over extended on some AMD options. They decoupled a bit from the fluctuations of SMCI and Nvidia (NVDA) which was not something I expected to see.
• Dip on Shopify (SHOP) meant I was able to fill out another block of 100 shares at a great price, since that had been called away a few weeks ago during the freefall in the market.
• Keeping some deal-sizes in check so I can hold some of these puts through earnings after the bell tonight since I am expecting some bad news from Amazon (AMZN) and Meta (META) which may cascade to the semiconductor space.
• Everywhere I look there's pretty lousy indicators pointing to lousy earnings this week but it's really not clear how much of this might have been priced in already.
• Order entry mistake took a small loss, oops! Meant to buy more at a lower price, but instead accidentally sold some options at a lower price.
• Trading pretty horizontal around mid-day which is not surprising as people digest the morning's news. It's challenging to time entry/exit when there's such tight cycles on the upward/downward movement. What looks like it might be momentum is quickly reversed.
• Annoyed to be behind on the AMD puts in mid-day, I feel confident the bottom should be dropping out, but it's not yet materializing. It is down on the day, but I am expecting to see if closer to 93-94 given the storm clouds on the horizon with SMCI's earnings miss, and other tariff headwinds.
• Anxiously watching the selling after lunch. Dive, dive, dive!
• Found a good dip to offload a portion of the AMD puts. The stock still is fluctuating almost +/- a dollar over the past hour.
• Saw a really big surge around 2pm, presumably related to Canada's Prime Minister planning to visit the White House? Still not sure.
• Picked up some Tesla (TSLA) puts after the spike, sold a little too early and only realized some minor returns, would have been 3x if I had waited a little longer for the slide to bottom out.